The chief source whence she draws her genealogical groupings of Lawsons (of whom she firmly believes the hideous faces on the mantle-piece to be faithful portraits), is the fine historical memory of Mark Wilson, the itinerating schoolmaster of the dales. Mark is expected to-day at the Yews, to take up his residence there for the next month, in the course of his regular routine journey from homestead to homestead. * He is the orphan son of the old curate of one of the neighboring dales, who could leave him from his spare pittance little besides his moderate store of learning and his thinly furnished bookshelves. But with this important legacy Mark felt himself, and was universally acknowledged to be, the learned man of the district. Pardon him his little weaknesses, for Mark is a good, honest, true-hearted lad, though his gait is a shade too measured, and the fountain of his learning a little too apt to overflow. Pardon him these fertilizing inundations; for he considers the land around to be marvellously dry and thirsty, and he thinks he is commissioned to do the bountiful work of the Nile when it overflows its banks and refreshes the waiting gardens and meadows of Egypt. * This is the plan pursued in the more remote dales, where the population is very thinly scattered. Before Alice had finished polishing her household motto, and rubbing up her ungainly family portraits, the latch of the wicket gate is heard, and she hastily looks out of the window. "Master Wilson is come, mother, books and all!" The said books distend the old leather bag on the shoulders of the young man who enters, far more than do the few quaint articles of his slender wardrobe. If this be all he includes under the portentous name of "luggage," life is a tolerably simple thing, after all. "Peace be unto this house," says Mark, solemnly, as he bends his tall thin figure under the low porch: and he looks like a true son of peace himself, as he pronounces his accustomed benediction, though his broad and high forehead is not without some lines which belong rather to the autumnal ploughing than to the spring-tide of life. But no one who ever saw the steady light of his fine clear eye could doubt that in him the words had been fulfilled, "They looked unto him [their Lord] and were lightened; and their faces were not ashamed." Alice received him with great deference, and a certain distant timidity; for she herself has been Master Wilson's pupil, as well as Miles and her younger brother Mat. He gives her a grave nod, and passes on to the widow's easy chair. "Winter has been here since I saw you, Mrs. Lawson. How did you bear up under the cold? Has the rheumatism been a little quieter?" This was spoken in a voice of such singular sweetness and power, that if one had caught its accents in the midst of the crush of one of the principal streets of London, one would have been impelled to look round and search out the speaker.